


For I Speak Not Loud Or Long

by ShastaFirecracker



Category: Last Exile
Genre: Dysfunctional Family, First Meetings, Gen, Gen or Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-03
Updated: 2015-01-03
Packaged: 2018-03-05 04:37:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3106154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShastaFirecracker/pseuds/ShastaFirecracker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When it's finally time to be assigned to a Guild royal as a bodyguard, the custom-bred prodigy who would become Lucciola isn't ready for the dangerous interplay of politics and emotion he's about to be thrown into.</p>
            </blockquote>





	For I Speak Not Loud Or Long

_“By the waters of Leman I sat down and wept . . .  
Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song,  
Sweet Thames, run softly, for I speak not loud or long.  
But at my back in a cold blast I hear  
The rattle of the bones, and chuckle spread from ear to ear.”_  
\---

“He isn’t ready.”

“The boy has advanced far beyond the expectations of the engineers. His evaluations --”

“He is too young.”

The vastness of exposed hull reflected the softest of sounds back to their origins, as if even the smallest disruption were being rejected from the heavens. Dimness veiled all movement. These were the servant levels of the Guild flagship, and here silence was the watchword, invisibility the only state of being.

Two voices, one a clear, soft baritone, the other pure velvet, feminine and low, held conference in the open floor.

“But her Ladyship has... expressed impatience with her brother,” said the woman.

“Again?”

“Expediency of the process has become key. Cicada wasn’t much older when he was instituted.”

“Cicada was a prodigy.” His tone was stiff.

“And another of the same line cannot be?”

“There will never be another Cicada.” Warning, now.

“Have you witnessed this one’s evaluations? In hand-to-hand alone -”

“Combat is animal instinct. Flight is an art. And it is physically impossible; he isn’t big enough.”

“With all due respect, I _must_ emphasize this recommendation. There is no other candidate remotely approaching suitability. Her Ladyship will not wait much longer.”

The faint echoes of the woman’s soft voice had faded completely into nothingness before a sigh once again broke the silence.

“Does he speak?”

“With eloquence, when spoken to.”

“Is he invisible?”

“Exceptionally so.”

“His loyalty to the Guild?”

“I have never known him to question an order.”

“And the royal family?”

“Upheld with the greatest respect.”

“I see.”

“The training?”

“A ship can be adjusted for his size. If his arms are strong enough, he will fly within the month.”

A slim figure shrouded in pale gray bowed deeply and murmured a phrase in the tongue of ceremony. As it turned away, a hand reached out, freezing the first figure with a gesture.

“Does he know his brother?” asked the assignment officer.

The head of youth development inclined her head. “He has never met Cicada. Few gain that privilege.”

“Most never return from it,” murmured the assignment officer. He looked pensive for a moment, then said, “Introduce them. Before the candidate meets his charge.”

“Is that wise?”

“It is the right and pride of the Guild to know its noble heritage,” he said coldly. “His is a finely crafted lineage, and he must not dishonor it. Show him what he must work towards becoming.”

“Yes.” The woman in pale gray bowed again and vanished from the room in silence.

The assignment officer turned his face upwards and gazed at the high buttresses of the shadowed room. The royalty lived in the brightness at the edges of the flagship; here in the underbelly, the servants and the nameless quietly maintained the Guild’s glorious domination of the world of Prester. Sunlight through the fiberglass-and-steel hulls filtered through the ship as if through deeper and deeper water, darkening along the way, until the central rooms rippled with a mere echo of day.

He wasn’t deaf to the whispers of Her Highness Lady Delphine’s displeasure over having to have so much contact with her young brother. A bodyguard would solve that, and prevent the young master from getting into so many punishable situations. But assigning a royal bodyguard was no light matter. As soon as any woman of the royal house got with child, the birthing engineers carefully mapped genetic pathways and developed two or three embryos as candidates for companionship. Trained from infancy in silence, dexterity, and grace - subtly programmed with suggestions of protectiveness and loyalty - drilled in observation above all else: these were the children who might, at the peak of their cognitive development, be introduced to the youngest member of the royal family. The strength of the bond formed at that point was all but inconceivable.

Royal bodyguards were a caste apart from even the highest of servants. They did not speak of their charges, but it was their invisible presence that made the nobles untouchable, that lent a screen of mystique and power and invincibility to even the most distant members of House Elaclaire.

And Lord Dio was hardly a distant member. For his bodyguard, nothing less than a child from the same genetic match that had produced Cicada would do. The assignment officer closed his eyes and found that his doubts were already fading.

For a month, the boy would learn to fly - the final preparation for each candidate, and their first time outside the inner walls of the flagship - and then...

Then it would be seen whether Lord Dio would give the boy a name.

\---

He had been called Defteros, and Entomo, and Protos Deigma Two. He understood that they were not names, not things that belonged to him, but rather a means of identification for others - fleeting but not entirely meaningless. He accepted each label without question, but Entomo had caused a stir of unease and emptiness within him. Insects, crawling things. He’d read about them, recited lists of them, but he had not known anyone to use it as a label. It had been a noble who had called him that, patting him condescendingly on the head during a discussion with his physical combat instructor.

“Mesos Deigma Eleven,” the assignment officer called. The line of children arrayed before him was a short one; seven individuals altogether. Five of them were variations of Mesos Deigma, and of those, the eleventh was the least.

“Sir,” said Eleven.

“Dismissed.”

Three others drifted out as well, one by one, until all that was left were Mesos and Kalos Six, and Protos Two.

He wasn’t ignorant. He knew that Protos meant first, best, prime. He knew that this selection process was a formality and that he had been designed from his conception to surpass all others. His face betrayed none of this, however, and the faces of the other two children standing on either side of him remained just as blank and attentive. Their pale hair and gray bodysuits, currently distended to their shapeless cape-like form, all but blurred into the colorless training floor.

Protos Deigma Two was six years and ten months old. Of the two other children beside him, one was well into her eighth year, the other beginning his ninth. If they harbored any resentment towards the Protos child for his specially-adjusted ship or his early graduation from flight training, it didn’t show in their empty eyes.

“Kalos Deigma Six,” the assignment officer intoned.

“Sir,” said the relevant child. Instead of being dismissed, the assignment officer looked her levelly up and down and said, “Report to starboard omega level for preparations. Her Ladyship Thileia of House Dagobert is waiting in the royal wing.”

The child nodded, her face betraying a flicker of apprehensive excitement in the moment in which it was downturned. The officer didn’t see, but the child called Protos Two did, and he resolved not to make such a slip.

The Mesos-grade child also received an assignment. At last it was only Protos Two alone in the center of the vast training floor, facing the imposing charcoal figure with darkened eyes who would decide his fate.

“Protos Deigma Two,” said the officer in the same tone and volume with which he had called every trainee.

“Sir,” he said in a clear, moderate voice - not yet broken, but neither a ringing tenor.

“You will accompany me,” said the officer.

Protos Two followed his elder without question, only allowing himself a single idle moment of curiosity before accepting that his fate was going to be different from that of the average trainee.

The head of youth development was waiting for them at beta level. Protos Two was handed over and led onward by the woman whose thin face and pursed lips looking down at him was the first conscious memory he had. If he felt anything, it was a strange affection for her. She had guided him, taught him - not distinct subjects, but rather how to learn. He was familiar with the concept of the mother-figure, and although she didn’t quite match it, the care she had taken with his education bespoke a deeper attachment than a mere master-student dynamic.

He didn’t know her name, if she had one. He didn’t know anyone with a name who wasn’t a noble.

“Defteros,” she said, because it was what she always called him. “Walk with me.”

He drifted up to walk alongside rather than behind her.

“Tell me what it means to be Protos Deigma Two,” she said quietly.

“It means that I am the second prime specimen.”

“Very close,” she said, “but the numeric qualifier does not have the meaning you have always thought it did. Recite.”

“Protos denotes the quality of genetic material from which I was created,” he said, unfazed. “Prime. Deigma Two, second-best specimen created from the Protos strain of -”

“The numeric qualifier does not signify your ranking,” she interrupted. “Make no mistake, you are the best-qualified for your new position. You are Two, you are Defteros, because you are only the second specimen created from the genetic match that has been labeled Protos.”

“Then -”

“The Elevens and Fifteens and other higher values that you have known all have as many directly genetically related siblings as there are digits applied to that particular genetic match, yes. There are sixty-four Ipios Deigma.”

“They are... siblings?”

“Genetically.”

He didn’t know what to make of that. He had a genetic sibling? But what did that _mean?_ Genes accounted for appearance and ability, not relationships. He changed the subject. “You said ‘new position.’ I have been assigned?”

“It is likely. First you will have a final interview.”

“With the noble to whom I may be assigned?”

They had stopped before a door. It was unimpressive, a mere panel in the wall, a servant’s door. But with his training in observation, the child called Protos Two noticed a small plaque next to the opening mechanism. On it was deeply engraved the alpha symbol.

“No, Defteros,” said the woman who had led him to the very door to the most impenetrable part of the flagship, that topmost pinnacle of glass and iron filigree that was home to House Elaclaire itself. Until now he had only seen it in passing on his practice flights in the outside sky.

“With the Maestro?” He didn’t realize he’d said it, or in what a thin, terrified tone it had escaped his throat, until it was out and couldn’t be taken back. He remembered the look on Kalos Deigma Six’s face as she received her assignment. And his own assignment wasn’t even assured, as hers had been.

If it did become assured, he would _live_ in that topmost pinnacle among the gods.

The head of youth development smiled thinly. “No,” she said. “A meeting has been requested between yourself and your genetic predecessor.”

The words barely registered. “Protos Deigma One?” he asked, struggling to clamp down on the tremble that still wanted to invade his speech.

“He is your brother,” she said. “His name is Cicada.”

And she opened the door, and left him alone.

_His name is Cicada._

He stared into the darkness beyond for a full minute before he took a step forward.

\---

Dimness gave way to dark greens and thick burgundies, and the air, so still in the hall outside, suddenly filled with a soft sense of movement, a beating heart behind still lungs. The waiting silence inside was entirely different from the mere absence of sound in the rest of the ship.

The door sighed closed and left no trace of itself on the inner wall of what Protos Two now recognized as the rear of the Elaclaire’s private atrium.

He had felt so awfully alone when his mentor had turned and left him to face the threshold by himself. But now that he was inside and there was no going back, his brief twinge of panic faded to be replaced by a deadly calm. He was not alone here. He would never be alone here.

And if he were assigned, he would never be alone again. Only this meeting stood in the way of that lasting truth.

Protos Two took another few steps forward, relishing the ease with which absolute silence and grace came to him; he felt eyes on him, and wondered if displaying his abilities like this would make a good first impression. He didn’t know what sort of impression he was _supposed_ to make, or what he was supposed to get out of this meeting, but now that he was here he would make the best of it.

A... brother. The concept held no meaning for Protos Two. Only two things had meaning for Protos Two now: that he was being judged, and that the one judging him was the only servant he had ever known to have a name. He repressed the thrill of bewildered awe and fear engendered by the latter; above all, he knew not to show weakness.

To level his head, he rationalized. Names themselves held no power. Servants’ names were given, not chosen. Cicada: an insect. Still a servant, still a shadow.

Entomo. Protos Deigma One.

Fronds of ancient plants, beautiful and delicate and preserved for the eyes of none but House Elaclaire, sighed and brushed against Protos Two’s face as he drifted slowly through the atrium. The waiting silence was not oppressive. He relaxed.

A hand was suddenly blocking his path. There was no indication of motion, no breath of wind or rustle of leaves, simply a hand, palm down, fingertips white as bleached bone down to the second knuckle; it took the space of a blink and a breath to register an arm attached to the hand, clad in dark gray and almost invisible against the dark colors of the atrium. Child’s eyes followed the arm up, to a face as white as the fingers of the entrapping hand and as far away as a noble’s.

Fear came late, but it hit hard. The hand in front of him could so easily have been on his throat with no more warning than the brush of an insect’s wing. Protos Two knew many ways to kill with his bare hands, but had put none of them into practice. Cicada had. One look at his face communicated that much, at least, although not much more - his eyes were as colorless as his hair, but darker, and all of him was as empty as a hollowed bone.

Protos Two’s heart raced steadily against his ribs, and time seemed to still. There was the hand, unmoving, and the white face, looking down, empty. Between, only shadow - and a message: _Everything you will ever be will never be enough._

The still hand seemed to say, I could kill you with a flick of the wrist - You move too much, be still - You aren’t watching what’s ahead of you, you don’t know where you’re going - You aren’t watching what’s behind you, you don’t know what might be coming. It was a challenge and an admonition and a beckoning and a sign of rejection. It was proof of how little Protos Two was worth and confirmation of his potential.

After a moment of deadly silence, the hand lowered, vanishing along with the shadowy arm into the side slits of the shapeless cloak that all servants wore. Cicada’s eyes stayed on him, pools of deeper shadow in the shade of the miniature forest, gluing Protos Two to the spot. He felt as though Cicada were trying to tell him something, but the message was lost in the gulf of difference between them.

A sound broke the spell that hung over the two. Laughter, soft and high - a noble, then, for servants did not laugh. Cicada turned his head first, allowing Protos Two the freedom to do the same. But Protos Two realized after a moment that this motion, like all his others, had been carefully calculated to send a message - the message that Protos Two was to do nothing before Cicada, nor without his permission.

But Protos Two allowed his mind to slip from his brother, just for an instant, as he followed Cicada’s gaze towards a sparser area of foliage that Protos Two hadn’t noticed before - another sign of Cicada’s superiority. Between the low branches there filtered a soft light, a yellow light so unlike the harsh fluorescence of the guidance strips in the hangars or the watery filtered-down light that reached the inner levels from the outer hull. This light was warm and familiar, and even though it was not natural sunlight, it still seemed... wholesome.

Protos Two did not register Cicada’s movement until he was several feet away. Protos Two followed, taking every pain to be just as silent, just as invisible. A few yards from the end of the greenery, just barely outside the division of soft light from dim shadow, the inhabitants of the atrium became visible. Two guards at the corners of the room, and... a child. A young boy lying on his front in the dirt just inside the edge of the planting area.

It was the child that caught Protos Two’s eye. His face was so open, his eyes aflame with the intensity of discovery. He was watching something on the floor, enthralled by it. And it was so wonderful, that look on his face - so beautiful, that joy - that Protos Two never wanted the boy to look otherwise.

It was true that the nobles were the most beautiful, then. True that they were the light and life of the world. The pale boy on the ground -

Whatever he was looking at flashed pale, luminescent green for a moment. He laughed again and it was like a sharp ascent towards the clouds and through them, up, up, the clarity and rejuvenation of the wind carried in that small voice.

“Dio,” said a voice. A woman’s. It was nothing like the boy’s, no clarity there, just... boredom. Protos Two had heard the same in the voices of many servants. “What have you found?”

The woman came around a corner and into view. Her face was perfectly made-up, her walk pristine, and Protos Two supposed she was beautiful. Her eyes didn’t hold the wonder of the child’s, though, and very little about her suggested anything beyond the glass and steel walls that enclosed them. She looked out of place in the soft light, and Protos Two found himself thinking of white fluorescent lights again, because they would suit her better, make her outline more definite, her movements easier to track. She moved like a wraith with no shadow and watching her made Protos Two uneasy. She would be a difficult enemy to protect a charge from.

“What have you found?” she crooned, leaning over the child.

“Look, look, look,” the boy - Dio - chanted, poking at the thing on the floor with a small finger. “It’s moving, it’s moving, look. Sometimes it glows. What kind is it? I haven’t learned them all.”

The woman’s face registered annoyance before disgust, and her exclamation a split second later was not as spontaneous as it looked. She knew what she was doing. She never lost control.

“Oh, how revolting!” she cried, straightening. “To think that an - an _insect_ like that was allowed inside -”

The boy was already scrambling to his feet, clutching at the woman’s sleeve. “Don’t take it away, Delphine, don’t tell -”

“Of _course_ it has to go, Dio, it’s unsanitary - and your hands are filthy, get off of me!” She batted him away. That look of wonder and excitement on his face was long fled, and Protos Two was unaccountably pained to see it go.

“Delphine, Delphine, don’t!” came the futile wail, but she was already halfway gone.

And so was Cicada, Protos Two realized; he was drifting away, ghostlike, through the shadows under the trees, to slip invisibly and unobtrusively into a back corner of the room, where Delphine found him a moment later as if he’d never been anywhere else. She gestured and talked quickly, her eyes dismissive, before turning back to Dio with a burning glare. Cicada, apparently with orders to carry out, turned to slip outside and speak to the top of the chain of command, passing the orders down and down to the menials who would eventually come in and scour the atrium for the insects that were the only source of the child Dio’s amusement.

Delphine railed at Dio, scolded him above and beyond what Protos Two thought necessary from the incident alone, until eventually a pair of caretaker-women came in and hovered at the door until ordered by Delphine to take Dio away and make him clean up for a formal dinner with their father, the Maestro. After the women and Dio were gone, Delphine walked over to the spot where Dio had been lying, swept her gaze over the ground until she saw the offending insect, and placed the needle-fine heel of her shoe directly over it before stepping down, quickly and efficiently. In the dead silence Protos Two almost thought he heard the tiny crackle of shattering exoskeleton.

With a soft sigh, Delphine wiped her heel carefully along the edge of the planting area until it was once again spotless, then turned to the far exit. Following her movements, Protos Two saw Cicada waiting for her there, a silent shadow.

“Come, Cicada,” murmured Delphine, reaching up to brush her thin fingers along his jaw. She didn’t look at him.

Before he turned to follow her, though, Cicada looked back once - just once, just for a moment - and met Protos Two’s eyes. His gaze was hard and cold, but far from empty. It said, _If you touch her, you will die._

Then the outer door slid shut and Protos Two was alone in the atrium, more alone than he’d been in the servant’s hallway... strangely crushed and exhilarated at the same time. In minutes he had known feelings, and intensities of feelings, that he had never felt before in almost seven years of life.

What was the key to the meaning of this meeting? His mentor had called it an interview, but there had been no questions, and Protos Two had given no answers. Nor had he gained any. He knew nothing more now than he had fifteen minutes ago... except one thing.

Protect the boy.

An artificial breeze began to whisper through the leaves around him, making it impossible to hide behind the moving fronds. Protos Two turned back towards the darkness and found his way back to the wall from memory. Behind him, out in the main part of the room, a door slid open and cleaners filed inside in a silent column.

Protos Two was gone before they began the process of extermination.

\-------

A day passed. The report came down. An assignment. The youngest royal bodyguard since the prodigy, whose genetic label of Protos Deigma One was breathed in reverence and fear and whose name was not spoken below the highest levels of power.

Protos Deigma Two didn’t see the report or overhear the conversations of his superiors (not superiors for much longer). He didn’t get a chance to ask the question that now burned his throat like no question ever had before.

_What did Cicada say about me?_

Why did it matter? He had an assignment. Whatever his brother had said, if anything, it had been favorable. It had to have been.

Still, Cicada’s silent skull-like face haunted his thoughts. What voice could possibly pass those thin lips? And how could it carry anything less than contempt for the genetic sibling who was so useless that he felt sorry for a dead insect?

The assignment officers came to his bunk and took him away without an explanation, but he knew what was happening. It was late, and this was not standard procedure, but Protos Two was different. The youngest royal bodyguard since Cicada. The best. The first choice, despite his names, his labels. No more numerical designation. No more Defteros.

They took him to alpha level. A handmaid, the highest rank of female servant, dressed him in clothes fine enough for a noble to look on. He felt naked without the clinging touch of his bodysuit, but the high collar was a comfort.

Then he was standing outside a door, the most elaborate door he’d ever seen, though it was still a servant’s door. Behind it waited the rest of his life.

His assignment officer, the one who had called each candidate out just yesterday - had it only been yesterday? - stepped up to the door, turned, and met Protos Two’s eyes. “You are hereby stripped of your genetic designation,” said the officer in a low tone. “Until you receive a name.” He hesitated, just for a breath, then added, “Sir.” He inclined his head.

The child, no longer with anything to call himself, felt his insides go cold and tight. This really was the end of everything he knew. Wasn’t it?

Slowly, he returned the slight bow.

The officer stepped to the side, said, “His Highness Lord Dio and Her Ladyship Delphine of House Elaclaire,” and palmed the panel to slide the door open. He and all the other nameless, faceless servants - suddenly meaningless, no longer voices of authority - stood by and waited.

Once again the child stepped over a threshold alone.

But not into silence, this time, nor into darkness. He stepped out of the hidden recess that housed the servant’s entrance and into the brightness of a room with high ceilings and golden lights, surrounded by a feeling of airiness and regality. All of a sudden relief broke through some wall inside the child, relief that he wasn’t the highest, that he still answered to something greater than himself. He might be the highest order of servant now, but the nobles were still there, a comforting weight above.

Nearby were Cicada and Lady Delphine. It truly struck the child for the first time that she was the daughter of the Maestro; this was not nobility, this was _royalty._ And Dio -

_Lord Dio._

A soft sound drew his attention - a sob, very small and quickly swallowed, but he’d already traced it to the center of the room. It was Lord Dio, once again sitting on the floor, curled in on himself. His shoulders trembled.

Cicada came to the nameless boy, drawing him out towards the center of the room, and Delphine went to her little brother, speaking to him in a low, sweet tone. After a moment she stood and clapped sharply, once - twice. Cicada’s presence vanished like smoke in a high wind, but the nameless boy didn’t look back to see where he had gone, because Delphine was pulling Dio to his feet - spinning him around - giving him a sharp little push forward.

Their eyes met.

“I’m giving him to you!” Delphine declared, loud and lilting. She clasped a bouquet of roses to her chest like a thorny child.

“To me?” Dio’s voice was faint and bewildered. The joy of yesterday still hadn’t returned, and there was a long, shallow cut along one round cheek.

“Yes, he belongs to you now.” Delphine’s eyes narrowed and she watched her little brother in a kind of detached adoration, as if he were a doll. She didn’t seem to see the nameless child.

Dio walked up to his new property, a little more confidence in each step, and the bewilderment on his face slowly began to be replaced by curiosity. “Who... who are you?” he asked timidly.

“You’re going to have to give your new present a name,” said Delphine, as if the question had been directed at her - because nobles didn’t ask questions of servants.

The nameless boy’s heart started to beat uncomfortably fast. Dio was close, so close, and at Delphine’s declaration he stepped even closer, something like the beginnings of fascination and joy glimmering in his wide eyes. It was so close to the look on his face from yesterday, and the nameless child didn’t know what to do if that purity were directed towards _him._

“Well, what do you want to be called?” Dio asked. The excitement of the new and the unknown edged his voice. But he didn’t wait for an answer before closing his eyes, tilting his head, and thinking aloud - “Auglis - Mantis? - or... Lucci...” His eyes flew open and there was the joy, perfected, the same joy from yesterday. “How about Lucciola?” he cried.

What was there to say? A name. A _name._ The boy, formerly Defteros, formerly Protos Two, formerly nothing, let the name that might be his slip out of his mouth, just tasting it, not knowing quite how to say it.

“...Lucciola...”

Dio’s face was so earnest, he knew he had to say something else. “Thank you very much, sir,” he said softly. “Lucciola is a wonderful name.”

Dio absolutely shone. He opened his small arms and flung them around his new companion’s neck, hugging tightly. The touch of his white hair was so soft. “Lucciola!” he was saying, delighted with his own voice and with the sound of the name. “From now on your name is Lucciola!”

Lucciola looked up, and just for a second Delphine looked at him. Straight at him. She, who didn’t look at servants, who barely noticed her own companion -

Her smile was strained and her eyes coldly conflicted. She reached up, snapped a rose from her bouquet, and with the flick of a wrist threw the blossom into Lucciola’s unflinching face. A thorn scratched his cheek; he and Dio matched. It was either a blessing or a curse, or perhaps both, and when the petals finished fluttering to the ground her eyes cleared and her smile broadened to show the smallest hint of teeth.

“So,” she said. “Give yourself a proper introduction.”

“Ah - yes, Lady Delphine,” he said, trying not to show how shaken he was. He gently touched Dio’s arms and moved him back far enough so that Dio looked him in the eyes.

“Greetings,” he said. “My name is Lucciola.”

The overwhelming circumstances calmed him with their surreality. His new name felt unreal on his tongue. The memory of a voice telling him _“he is your brother; his name is Cicada”_ felt years ago and miles away.

_I’ll be the best,_ Lucciola thought to himself, almost serenely. _I’ll surpass Cicada. I am second because I am an improvement on the first - not because I’m second-best._

_Protect the boy. Nothing else matters. Nothing ever will._

Dio beamed innocently, cut on his cheek stark against the white of his skin, and said, “And you can call me Dio! My whole name is Dio Elaclaire!”

He embraced Lucciola again, as tight as a child knows how, and over his shoulder Lucciola saw Delphine and her hollow-faced shadow moving away towards the door on the other side of the room. Before they left, Cicada turned to look at his brother -

In the chill moment that followed, Lucciola raised his arms, almost without thinking, and returned Dio’s embrace. He thought as hard as he could, _If you touch him, you will die. If you touch him..._

He almost thought he saw a smile on Cicada’s thin lips before he vanished after his mistress.

“My name is Lucciola,” he whispered against Dio’s hair, so that even Dio couldn’t hear.

**Author's Note:**

> Insects and names are the biggest themes, obviously -- the insect Dio is looking at on the ground is probably a firefly, and “lucciola” means firefly in Italian. Entomo is “insect” in Greek; in the line “the boy, formerly Defteros, formerly Protos Two,” the reason I intentionally left out “formerly Entomo” is because, technically, he is still “Entomo” to the end -- he just gains a different name for an insect. (Other Greek stuff: protos, mesos, kalos, ipios, etc are all some variation of quality, i.e. prime, good, average, poor, etc; deigma=specimen, defteros=second.) About the poem quote: “By the waters of Leman” echoes Psalms 137:1: “By the rivers of Babylon...” (Guild=Babylon/Lake Leman aka Lake Geneva, Switerland; serene grandiosity.) The noun “leman” is also an archaic word for “lover.” (This fic could be considered as laying the groundwork for future Dio/Lucciola slash, although they are far too young here.) “But at my back...” etc. is an ironic distortion of Andrew Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress,” lines 21-22: “But at my back I always hear / Time’s winged chariot hurrying near.” (Both Dio’s and Lucciola’s days are numbered.)


End file.
